


An olive branch

by vulnerable_bead



Series: From Russia, because of love [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Nikolskoye Cemetery, Original Character: Grisha Kamyshkin, Victor remembering his mother, farewell to Sankt Petersburg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 20:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14088987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulnerable_bead/pseuds/vulnerable_bead
Summary: Victor takes Yuri to the Nikolskoye Cemetery to visit his mother's grave. Yuri asks about her, and learns some things about Victor's past.





	An olive branch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [joolita](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=joolita).



> This vignette belongs towards the end of Chapter 11 of “Gains and Losses”, just before Victor and Yuri's departure from Sankt Petersburg; but it relies on the contents of Chapter 5, “The ghost”, relating the story of Victor’s relationship with Grisha Kamyshkin, and Chapter 6, “A hundred 'I love you’s”, which tells about Yuri’s reaction to meeting the man.

Cemeteries in Sankt Petersburg were so far outside my sphere of experience that I did not have any expectations. This is why I did not give it a thought when, instead of taking a bus, we walked there, stopping for a coffee on the way.

I see the trees, dense, although still bare, and at first I think we are turning into a park. Then I notice the graves. It is only when we are at least a hundred metres beyond the gate that I realise what I’m seeing. The headstones are old, some dating from before the Revolution, many of them beautiful, with sculptures and metal railings delicate like lace. Scattered among them are some new, less nice, but still very impressive graves, and through the trees I see a lovely old _lavra_. This is a historic cemetery.

A small kneeling angel catches my eye. I’m not even sure it is a gravestone; it seems to just stand there without rhyme or reason and there is something touching in its forlorn aura. Just after we have passed it by, we turn from the main lane into a gravelled path. Then another turn, by a new grave with the portrait of a stern-looking gentleman shallowly chiselled in the surface of black marble.

I glance at Victor. He is calm. Good; I was worried. A shadow fills the hollow below his cheekbone. I turn my eyes away, his clean profile etched under my eyelids.

Today is a weekday, early afternoon, there are only a tourist or two around and a few old ladies busy praying or tidying the graves. So – I gingerly slip my hand into his. A moment of hesitation and his fingers respond. We walk like this for a while; then our hands unclasp, the movement natural. How I cherish those discreet gestures of affection I would have taken for granted had he been a girlfriend.

We stop by a simple gravestone of grey granite. At its foot there is a bench of the same stone. Victor takes off his jacket, throws it on the bench. As he leans down, his slim-fit shirt stretches, the contours of his body clear underneath, and I love the way his trousers are hugging his hips. He looks up at me and smiles.

‘ _Davai, Yuryen’ka, sadis’._ ’ His hands are carefully smoothing the fabric to make it nice for me to sit on.

He was always affectionate, but the last few weeks have been special. And I think it has nothing to do with the attack I suffered. Yes, he came to a very serious decision as a result, but… that’s not it. Something in him has eased up and now… He seems filled with a strange inward joy.

‘But your jacket…’ I hesitate.

‘ _Sadis’_ , _sadis’_. I wouldn’t like your butt to freeze off. I’m very fond of that butt.’

‘Victor,’ I remonstrate, sitting down.

My sweetheart plants himself beside me, adding, ‘Also, I find it useful.’

‘Victor!’ I wail. He is right, though. I am still feeling pleasantly stretched and tender inside from morning sex. ‘Do you have to…? I mean, here…?’

He grows serious, even though his eyes glitter with mirth.

‘ _Yablochko_ , do you really think my mother would mind seeing me happy? Besides, she didn’t speak English.’ Then he leans to my ear and murmurs, in Russian, a remark that is flattering but so filthy that I can’t suppress a scandalised squeak. Victor grins. ‘See? _This_ I wouldn’t like her to hear.’

‘You’re incorrigible. I give up.’

‘I think you mean: give in. Mm. It will be nice to see you submissive for a change.’

I sketch a very theatrical collapse. This man should be officially forbidden to pun.

He has managed to shut me up, though, because this morning I woke up, quite unusually, before him, and very hungry for him. A little snuggling and a few judicious wiggles of my butt, and… well, I can’t say I left him much choice. By the time he was fully awake, I had him firmly inside me.

Afterwards we dozed off, barely uncoupled. That’s why we came here later than planned. It was sweet to drift back into sleep feeling myself covered with his body, his arms crossed on my breastbone and his thigh over mine. The rise and fall of his chest against my back was slow like the breathing of the ocean.

Victor is looking at the grave with a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. I have a distinct feeling he, too, is thinking about the events of the morning.

Suddenly I realise he is right. All that I know about his mother tells me she wouldn’t have minded her son getting himself a foreign boyfriend to love. I will never know the truth, of course. But it is nice to imagine we would have been friends, united in our devotion to this silver-haired beauty that is her son. 

I read the words on the headstone. His grandmother was called Galina Fiodorovna Koneva. She lived for seventy-three years. His mother died at only forty-two and she was called Svetlana Stepanovna Koneva. Nice names. Then my eyes narrow. There is a familiar word – one of the first words I was able to read in Cyrillic – which I should see here. And yet I most definitely do not.

I turn to Victor and I can see he noticed me noticing. I am pretty transparent to him. I’m okay with this. Over the past year I’ve learnt that if I truly need to conceal something from him, I can.

‘My mother returned to her maiden name,’ he explains. ‘I was stuck with Nikiforov.’

I acknowledge this with a grunt. His parents’ divorce must have been traumatic.  

‘What was she like?’ I ask.

‘Tired. She worked very long hours.’

It is sad that the first thing that comes to a son’s mind is his mother’s tiredness. The life of this small family was not easy.

‘An unenthusiastic cook.’

Yeah, this is something he would remember. He still eats like a wolverine, he must have been an absolute vacuum cleaner as a kid.

‘Very patient. Good at explaining things to me. Ready to listen to my explanations. We got on well. My friends were envious. I remember one saying, “You got looks, you got talent, and you got a nice mother. This is so unfair”. I couldn’t disagree.’  

He raises his face towards the sun. He is relaxed, obviously happy. What I don’t know yet, but am going to learn soon, is that from now on he will be completely easy sharing stories of his childhood with me; all save one.

‘You chose a beautiful place for her,’ I say when I realise no more is forthcoming.

His stillness is suddenly different, awkward.

‘I didn’t,’ he says quietly. ‘I didn’t choose it.’

‘You mean… you were ordered to…?’ I blunder in deeper, aghast, because what do I know about the customs here in Russia, more than ten years ago.

‘No, no. You don’t understand. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I had just bought the flat, I was penniless. But it’s not even that. I was an eighteen-year-old, dime-a-dozen sportsman with no connections. I would never have been _given permission_ to bury my mother at such a prestigious place.’ He hangs his head and finishes, uneasily, ‘It was Grisha’s doing.’

Ugh. This was unexpected.

The silence of the cemetery is exquisite, the beehive hum of the city muffled by trees.

‘He had influence,’ he continues. ‘How, do you think, I was allowed to buy a flat in such a lovely old tenement, in the very heart of the city? He talked to someone, I don’t even know who, I just had to sign the papers. When mum died, I was shattered. Grisha made me keep attending school. It was May, I was to have the finals soon. I wouldn’t have taken them if not for him; I wouldn’t have cared. He actually posted a man at my door with an order to take me to school by force if necessary. And he took care of the funeral. When the day came, it turned out that it was here. He had my grandmother’s coffin moved from the Yuzhnyi cemetery so that all my family would rest in the same place. He got all the permissions, did the paperwork. And he paid for everything.’

So this is what Victor meant when he once told me that his patron had looked after him when his mother died.

‘The funny thing is that if my mother knew she would be buried at the Nikolskoye, she would not have cared at all. She was not that kind of person. But my grandmother, I think, would have been delighted.’

Pause. High above us, a blackbird is whistling its love song.

‘During the funeral Grisha stayed by my side. If it weren’t for him, I would have stood there alone. Later, when people were coming up to offer their condolences, some of them thought he was my father. They commiserated with him on losing his wife. He didn’t even bat an eye. He thanked them, that’s all. He never mentioned it afterwards. Can you imagine, the only person to be there with me was the man who was paying me for sex.’ He snorts at the irony of it. ‘Isn’t life weird.’

I look at the tomb. Engraved at the bottom of the headstone is a small branch, the lancet-shaped leaves and the oval berries easily recognisable. As we walked through the cemetery, I noticed that many headstones had a sprig of flowers, roses or carnations, under the names of the deceased. But a branch like this, no; I would have noticed.

‘Why the olive branch?’ I ask, wishing to change the subject.

My attempt turns out a spectacular fail. Victor hisses through his teeth.

‘Damn you, Yuri, do you have to be so observant?’ he says without rancour.

I wait in silence. I wait for a long while.

‘Grisha said that this was a promise of my future sporting triumphs,’ he says finally and now his voice _is_ strained. ‘Because an olive branch wound into a wreath was the prize at the Olympic Games in ancient Greece. But the truth is, it is his signature. To make me remember it was he who did this. He liked… olives.’

Victor is a very bad liar. So now I know who is behind his liking for olive oil during sex. Years have passed and its scent still turns him on. I briefly consider whether to tell him I have guessed.

No. Let me allow him this much dignity.

I inherited Grisha’s lover with all he had instilled in him and I’m ready to accept this. And my own feelings about the man are complicated enough. The less said about him the better. But the next time I see olive oil in the Oriental tea bowl by our bedside, I will have to suppress a huff.

You have a fine sense of the symbolic, my love.

We have grown so attuned to each other that these days we use oil mostly because Victor likes the scent and the feel of it. When he tops me, we practically don’t need it. When I top him, we do. I wonder what Grisha would say if he knew his former lover forgot him so completely that he enjoys a kink without giving a thought to the man he shared it with.

I blow softly at the rosy shell of Victor’s ear. This is a substitute for a kiss which we use in public. An exhalation is invisible if you don’t purse your lips. On the metro, in a shop, in a museum or simply walking down a street, I often feel this light current of air against my skin and I know that in his mind, he has just kissed me.

He smiles.

‘Shall we go? Maccha will be waiting.’

We are walking towards the exit.        

Victor once told me his mother would have loved me. I want him to understand that I, too, would have considered her my second mother. Big words don’t come easily to me, but there is something I’ve just realised I can _do_. I stop and look back. The forlorn angel, turn, the stern man, turn, turn. Yes, I will find it.

‘Victor, I… I noticed the date. I mean, the anniversary. You’ll be abroad then. So… I just want you to know that I remember the way. I will bring flowers. For both of us.’

I hope he understands what I’m trying to say by this.

His eyelashes flutter and I think I see a brief glint at the corner of his eye.

‘Thank you.’

Yes, he understands.

This is when the realisation strikes me.

Victor is the articulate one in this relationship. I am, in general, more comfortable with actions than with words. Victor loves it. He says that no-one has ever done things for him the way I do. But is this true?

When his mother died, Victor had been Grisha’s lover for less than a year. I can easily imagine that the older man was still trying to win the affection, if not the love, of that exquisite boy. Only he didn’t know how. So all he did was… doing things for him. Teaching him. Training him. Spoiling him with gifts. Looking after him when he was heartbroken.  

I can almost feel sorry for Grisha. Almost. But not quite. I am not ready to forgive him that single midwinter evening. I don’t like having my weaknesses exploited.

The evening brings an awkward closure to this episode.

I am thinking about what I’ve learnt about Victor today. And about our departure from Russia, which is drawing near. I decide that Grisha overstepped a boundary and does not deserve a leave-taking; nor, I think, would he appreciate one. But there is another person, one who has been very conspicuous by his absence in all Victor’s tales, to whom he might consider offering an olive branch before he goes away.

The subsequent exchange shows that our minds work along very similar lines.

‘Victor, shouldn’t you also…’ I begin.

‘No!’ he answers with uncharacteristic sharpness. ‘Don’t even ask.’

A moment of tight silence.

‘Besides, I don’t know where he is.’

I nod my acquiescence.

Some sins are never forgiven.


End file.
